December 12, 2008
A group of about 25 people sat on a Chicago River tour boat and thought for a few seconds, basking in the late-morning sun, before somebody finally spoke up. A simple question, one that probably had been asked on every city tour, had recently been put out to the group: “What do the four stars on the city of Chicago flag stand for?”
“The fire of 1871,” yelled one woman.
“How about the Columbian Exposition?” shouted a man in the back.
“Is Fort Dearborn one of them?” another lady asked.
All three of the answers were correct, but there was still one star un-accounted for. The tour guide rejected various guesses before a man near the front cleared his throat and gave the question his best shot.
“I know what it is,” the man said. “The ’85 Bears!”
The response was factually incorrect, but to many Windy City residents, nothing represents Chicago more than that special football team. Twenty-three years after they last walked off the field as victors in Super Bowl XX, the players and coaches of the 1985-86 Chicago Bears still have a strong presence in the city’s sports scene. Some appear on TV and radio weekly to comment about the current Bears squad. Others have moved up from playing to become successful NFL coaches. The ’85 Bears, more so than any other team in football history, have a legacy that has lived on, long after the last piece of confetti was swept up from their championship parade.
Why has this love affair lasted so long? Every year the NFL crowns a new Super Bowl champion, yet there has never been a team that hoists the Lombardi Trophy with the lasting impact of the ’85 Bears. Was it their on field dominance? Off the field bravado? Or maybe they were perfect team that came along at the perfect time.
“Chicago is a Bears town to a great degree, and the city really related to that team,” says Mike Ditka, the head coach of the ’85 Bears. “They were tough, no-nonsense, and they really got after it. The team just reflected the personality of the city.”
To fully understand the legacy of the 1985 Bears, it’s important to know just what kind of monster they were. The team went 15-1 in the regular season and out-scored their three playoff opponents by the Godzilla-sized margin of 91-10 to win the city’s first professional sports title in 22 years. Created in the mold of Coach Ditka, the roster was filled with players who didn’t mind getting their hands dirty. At the same time, the Bears were brash and confident, strolling through the league like Bonnie and Clyde did through Texas and Oklahoma.
That brashness was backed up by incredible results. The Bears offense starred beer-chugging quarterback Jim McMahon, who wore sunglasses as a result of a childhood eye injury yet loved the spotlight more than anybody on the team (with the exception of Ditka). McMahon was good at throwing passes, but was equally skilled at creating media storms. His most famous antics occurred in the week leading up to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, when the QB received death threats for allegedly calling the host city’s women ‘sluts’, played a joke on the NFL commissioner by putting his name on a headband, and mooned a helicopter full of journalists during a team practice.
“It took 20 years but finally the ultimate cult showman had emerged in the sporting world's ultimate pop-art event,” writes Curry Kirkpatrick in a February 1986 Sports Illustrated article. “All McMahon did was play hard, have fun, win and force football fans everywhere…to look deeper into this bloated activity that has become the Super Bowl and chuckle at it, him and themselves.”
The team also allowed fans to see two completely different styles of running back. First was Hall-of-Famer Walter Payton, who ran with a smile on his face but was tougher than advanced calculus. During the 1985 season, Payton ran for over 1,500 yards, had nine touchdowns and humiliated countless defenders who were shocked they couldn’t contain the 31-year old runner known to Chicago as ‘Sweetness’. The second was William Perry, a rookie in ’85 who had originally been drafted by the team to play on the defensive line. Ditka though, had other plans. He used Perry as a 6-foot, 2-inch, 385-pound middle finger to opponents, inserting the loveable rookie nicknamed ‘The Fridge’ on the goal line in certain occasions to humiliate rival teams. Perry rumbled like a boulder into the end zone four times over the course of the season, including one in the Super Bowl, vindicating the coach’s choice.
“William Perry was a good football player, and since he wasn’t being used on defense, we used him on offense…he was too talented to leave on the bench,” Ditka says. “The year before [in the 1984 NFC Championship game], San Francisco had used a defensive player as a fullback, and while I forgive, I didn’t forget. So I put Perry in the backfield for the first time versus San Francisco in ’85 and the rest is history.”
While the Bears’ offense provided fans the humor of watching a nearly 400-pound man run with the football, it was the team’s defense that struck everybody— fans, journalists, opposing players— with awe and fear. Behind the genius of defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, the Bears instituted what is known as the ’46 Defense’, which is all predicated on one word: pressure. Defensive linemen Richard Dent, Otis Wilson and Steve McMichael pressured quarterbacks, setting up residency in opposing backfields while making sure opponents knew them on a first-name basis. Future Hall-of-Fame inductees Dan Hampton and Mike Singletary pressured running backs, ensuring everybody who played the Bears left the game feeling like they’d been facing real-life Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots for three hours. And the scary part was that while one team was feeling all this pressure, the 11 players in the navy blue helmets were smiling and laughing the entire time, because the Bears defense knew they were better than everybody else.
Michael Silver, a former pro football writer for Sports Illustrated and current NFL columnist for YahooSports.com, says that the ’85 Bears were like no other NFL team he’d seen before or witnessed since.
“First off, it might have been the best defense ever. The 46, strategy wise, was cutting edge,” Silver says. “They were good players with an attitude, and there was an absolute aura about that team.”
The aura that Silver speaks of came from the Bears’ on-field supremacy, but was often displayed in off-field antics. No team in NFL history shared the Bears’ swagger, which tended to be the size of Lake Michigan. The best example of that is the “Super Bowl Shuffle,” the boastful rap and dance video 25 members of the team created the day following their only loss of the season.
“We’re not here to start no trouble / we’re just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle,” the chorus went, as the Bears made the most melodious guarantee in football history.
The song was bold— imagine if they hadn’t won the big game? — and profitable— all of the song’s revenue went to fight hunger in the city— but also a reflection on how the Bears thought of themselves: superior to their opponents. But mostly, the sight of 25 professional football players singing and dancing was downright comical.
Silver believes that while the ’85 Bears were greatly entertaining both on and off the field, all of their extra-curricular shenanigans were among the reasons that the Bears only won one Super Bowl, unlike the other dominant teams of the decade, the San Francisco 49ers and the New York Giants.
“The Bears had such big personalities, and maybe it was an accident, but they acted like it was a one-shot deal. There’s probably a sense that the ’85 team milked it for all they could,” Silver says. “Not too many teams can reflect their city’s personality. The 49ers, with Bill Walsh and the West Coast offense, were just smarter than everybody else, which is exactly how those Bay Area intellectuals feel. And the Bears were hard working and tough, the same as the rest of Chicago.”
Twenty-three years later, it’s not uncommon to turn on the radio in Chicago during football season and hear the heavy drums and synthesizer beat of the “Super Bowl Shuffle”. Every so often in the newspaper or on sports talk radio, when the current Bears are doing well, somebody will chime in that no matter how impressive their record is, no Bears team will ever come close to the dominance of 1985. Three members of the team are current NFL coaches. And in 2000, when the city of Chicago decided to open a new, elite public high school, they had to pick a name that would reflect the city’s blue-collar attitude; students now attend Walter Payton College Prep.
As for that fourth star on Chicago’s flag, it actually represents the 1933 World’s Fair. But any Bears fan will tell you, that should change. They don’t want to start any trouble. They just want to honor their favorite team and do the Super Bowl Shuffle.
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